


Atonement

by resurrectionfromashes



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Emotional Hurt, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Explicit Sexual Content, First Time, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-12-10
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:49:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27124085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/resurrectionfromashes/pseuds/resurrectionfromashes
Summary: Tom thinks he's found what he needs in Edna, only to be confronted by the truth facing Thomas's injuries.
Relationships: Thomas Barrow/Tom Branson
Comments: 16
Kudos: 87





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: initial dubious consent because Tom doesn't ask, and Thomas has no idea what is going on.

  
He permits Edna to manipulate him fully conscious. 

  
What makes him better than her? Than his ex-colleagues? Getting married to his Lordship’s daughter? Rising upon the ladder of social status? Betraying his country, his past and a part of himself well-hidden from the moment he set foot on English soil. 

  
He loved Sybil. He loved her with his body, mind, soul and heart. 

  
He still loves her.

  
She’s gone and he’s here, having taken her place in her absence in a household foreigner to him. She’s gone and he’s here, heart slowly shattering in pieces. Large pieces of glass or a mirror stabbing his insides. Or shrapnel in the heart that shopped him from going to war, that let him stay close to her when others never returned, returned hurt, wounded in the body and mind, returned dead or returned to their country to die. Pieces of shrapnel slowly moving inside his body, spreading the pain, intensifying the bleeding he hopes will overflow his fragile mind.

  
He gives Edna the right to push him around, and she’s anything but subtle. He doesn’t care about audience; she wants power over him and if asked he wouldn’t know why he’s giving it to her so freely. 

  
Guilt. Maybe it’s guilt. 

  
He gives into her because he deserves it. He deserves her oppression of his freedom far more than he deserved Sybil’s love; his Angel who died after giving birth to his child.

  
His Sybbie. The one person he lives for. The purity in his life, alive and warm in his arms, not yet contaminated by the poison he feels he is. He will protect his daughter from everyone. This is the reason he can’t give in to his guilt, he can’t give in to the punishment he know he deserves, the punishment Edna could have been. The atonement for dating to love, for daring to have Sybil.

  
He sits with her in the pub listening to her endless verbal thrashing, feeling the glass pieces piercing his insides, enjoying the pain. In rare moments, he pushes the self-loathing aside and is amused by Edna’s attempts of courting via guilt-tripping and briefly wonders if she’s doing it because she can see the guilt gnawing his insides or if she actually thinks her plan would work on an emotionally stable man. 

  
He leans towards the first; she really believes she’s more cunning than she is. 

  
He lets her drag him to the servants’ hall to remind him where he came from, as if he could or would forget. He lets her do the talking and sits like a beaten puppy on the side.

His eyes are drawn to Thomas Barrow of all people, scoffing at him from the other side of the table, criticizing his decision to permit Edna to manipulate him with just one hard grey gaze. Barrow holds his responsible for Sybil’s end, Tom is certain of that. Barrow agrees with Tom that he didn’t deserve Sybil or her love. 

  
Thomas Barrow with his dark hair, and pale skin, grey-blue eyes. Just like his angel. And so different. Two people cannot be more different than Barrow and Sybil, Tom thinks trying to shove Mrs. Patmore’s tasty food down his throat. Comparing the man to Sybil is a sacrilege to her memory. 

  
Not the first sacrilege Tom has been prone to. It’s the one that makes his stomach clench in pain as thousand sharp pieces of the broken mirror are gathered there by small colourful butterflies. The one he regrets. 

  
He forces his eyes away from Barrow’s derisive face, but not before noticing the different way the man looks at the new footman. James? Jimmy? The Kent boy. 

  
He recognises the emotion he’d kill to avoid. It cuts the pieces of the glass with edges moving inside his chest and downward to his stomach.

  
Ashamed that he wants that look directed at him. From the same hard grey eyes who can turn tender when they feel like it.

  
Ashamed of that part of himself – long thought dead by his Sybil’s love and light – is alive while she’s dead.

  
He punishes himself for his weakness by permitting Edna to drag him to the county fair, strict and ready to accept his suffering as retribution for his moral failings. He wonders if the power above wants him to atone when his insides clench with guilt and want at Barrow’s presence. A Barrow who’s hurt by Kent’s indifferent, harsh words. 

  
For years, Tom believed Barrow to be heartless and even if his Sybil disagreed with him, vehemently at times, he had just nodded his head at her not wanting to spend his time with her fighting about someone like Barrow, who might have been handsome enough to tempt Tom, but there was no feeling to light a fire in his heart. And now, watching him trying to prove himself to the boy, it was enough for doubts to enter his mind. 

  
He stayed close to them, disbelieving Jimmy’s easy disparage of Barrow’s manhood. 

  
_“Isn’t it a bit rough for Mr. Barrow?”_

  
The man had gone to war, had lived through and seen more than all of them combined. He was the one who wouldn’t settle or pretend he was something he wasn’t. Like Tom. Like Lord Grantham’s son in law. 

  
The shrapnel settles on his chest creating a heaviness that won’t go away. It moves through his veins carrying the weight through his body.

  
Edna’s arm wrapped around his elbow intensifies the burden on his chest. 

  
What would it be like? Having Thomas Barrow try to prove himself to him in an effort to win his affection.

  
His Sybil was right. Of course his Sybil was right. She was rarely wrong, if not always right.

  
But Tom is not to blame for being unable to see Barrow as a man with feelings. He hides them well, unless someone is keen enough to search for them. 

  
When did Tom become this _someone_? Keen enough to look deep to bring Barrow’s feelings to the surface?

  
The butterflies take the glasses’ place in his stomach. Barrow, Thomas, is right behind him, holding the same rope, pulling with the same strength as his, to prove himself to Kent, for acceptance from those he wants it the most.

  
They win. He pulls Barrow up from the ground he fell onto and into his arms, in a quick hug. He doesn’t know how he dared it. He can blame it on the heat of the moment, the exhilaration of the win. For few precious moments, there’s no hard edges stabbing his insides. 

  
He lets Barrow go for them to return with a vengeance accompanied by his old friend, courtesy of his upbringing. The guilt. So strong. So deserving. 

  
He’s guilty. Guilty of everything he’s been accused of his whole life and he tried to shove under the rug. 

  
He despises Barrow’s involvement in his feelings.

  
He detests himself. Edna is there to drape herself all over him and he lets her in an effort to punish himself and soothe his guilt. 

  
Barrow’s being beaten is a punch to the stomach. Barrow is vulnerable, bloody and beaten, broken in body but stands strong in spirit. 

  
_“It’s not like you!”_

  
For the first time, Tom sees Thomas unbeaten, unbroken, proud as blood runs down his cheekbone, overflows his otherwise handsome face, as bruises form on his face and jaw. None of them knows what is _like Thomas_ because Thomas will only permit precious few to see him. Most of them, Tom believes, don’t deserve the gift. 

  
Tom stares as Thomas looks past him, and turns around only to see Kent. He recognises the feelings in Kent’s physique. Guilt, shame, attempt to hide it. Edna’s presence behind him doesn’t help this time. Jealousy came to stay as it enfolds around every broken piece of glass on his chest, like cotton candy in place of bitter whisky. 

  
He brings the car as close as he can and sees Alfred and Dr. Clarkson half carrying, half dragging Thomas to the car. He gets out with the intention of helping them but he just opens the door and ushers patient and doctor inside. He doesn’t about the blood sullying the car’s tapestry. 

  
It won’t go away.

  
Tom is not sure if he wants it to go away. 

  
It will be a reminder. _Of what?_

  
He helps Dr. Clarkson to take Barrow to his room and then disappears inside his own. 

  
Edna comes later to inform him that Mr. Barrow feels better.

  
How does she know? How does she know he is interested in Barrow’s well being?

  
He’s half naked in front of her, in ways more than one. 

  
Edna leaves, and he wants to thank Mrs. Hughes for her help. But Edna was a kind of solution, she was a physical reminder of the bleeding inside him.

  
It’s a few days later, it’s late… he finds himself waking up from a dream he hadn’t since he was a teenager. 

  
The pieces cutting him inside are not enough. He raises the decanter of the expensive cognac swallowing down, the amber liquid burning his mouth, goes down to his stomach spreading the fire. 

  
He pulls on his dressing gown.

  
He knows his way around the house. He only spent one night in the servants’ rooms. He had his own hut and he had been grateful of that little mercy. Bates had shown him the other servants’ rooms and he finds himself standing in front of Barrow’s room.

  
_This is punishmen_ t, he tells to himself.

  
He knocks and enters, before he gets an answer from the other side.

  
What if Barrow has changed rooms?

  
He hasn’t. 

Barrow lies down on the bed; a thin coverlet covering his legs from the waist down, a loose fitting pyjama top covers his upper body Tom only sees when he sets the book he’s been reading on his lap to stare at Tom. 

  
He’s surprised. 

  
No more surprised than Tom is. 

  
Barrow recovers faster than Tom. “Mr. Branson?” 

The bruises have turned a yellowish purple, the swelling on the side of his head is hard to miss. 

  
Tom swallows. Barrow attempts to push his cover off him and stand. Tom raises his arm to stop him and steps inside, closing the door behind him. 

  
“Stay!” He thinks he orders him, but his voice sounds more like begging the other man to stay where he is, to let him gather his intoxicated thought.

  
The pain is there, he thinks the wound inside him will never close.

  
_This is his punishment._

  
He’s not sure he believes it himself.

  
Barrow looks at him questioningly.

  
That’s not how he stared at Kent. 

  
Tom’s feet carry him closer to Barrow. He looks small and fragile, just as he looked at the fair. 

  
_Tom wants._

  
He unties the robe and lets it fall on the floor. He only wears his pyjama bottom. 

  
This is his decision. The part of his brain that calls it punishment is quiet. 

  
Not silent, just quiet. 

  
Barrow’s eyes widen as his reason for being there becomes clear. “What are you doing?”

  
What is he doing? The quietness turns into screaming ordering him to get away before he does something stupid. Tom has never before listened to it. 

  
_He wants._

  
He wants Barrow. 

  
He leans over and straddles Barrow’s legs who in turn tries to push back against his pillows on the wall. “Tell me to go away and I will,” Tom is not sure he will. He may stay in the chair, watching Barrow all night, feeding the glass inside him. 

* * *

Thomas’s surprise is replaced by shock. What does Branson play at? His hands, rough from the work in the cars, are on Thomas’s shoulders, his weight painful against his bruises but also comforting on his thighs. 

  
He wants to call his bluff out. 

  
He wants to tell him to leave him alone.

  
Branson leans down and brings his mouth to his in a hard kiss, more teeth than lips.

  
_Not a bluff then._

  
He feels his lips splitting over again, tastes the metallic of blood on his tongue. 

  
Thomas doesn’t dare to raise his hands from the bed. Doesn’t dare to push Branson away when he doesn’t know what brought the other man in his room.

  
In seconds Branson stands, removes his trousers and straddles him again. Naked. Thomas has only ever seen one man naked like this in his whole life. 

Phillip. Branson is nothing like Phillip. He’s hard where Phillip was soft. He’s fair where Phillip had been dark. 

Hands fumble on his pyjama, unbuttoning it pulling him out and before he understands what is going on, Branson pushes down on him, his face contorted with pain. And he remembers Phillip again, in the same position as Branson, pleasure running through his veins.

Thomas refuses to be the cause of anyone’s physical pain. He refuses to be used again. He raises his hands and sets them on Branson’s hips stopping his movements. “Stop. You’re hurting yourself.”

“Let me. You don’t care either way.” The tears in Branson’s eyes feels like a blow, similar to the ones that led him stranded on this bed for days. 

He reaches over his arm and opens the drawer to get the jar with his ointment. “We either do it my way or you take your clothes and leave.”

Thomas wishes Branson takes the latter option and leaves him alone. To ponder over what the hell happened here tonight. But the other man surprises him again and dips his fingers inside the ointment before he reaches behind him to breach his own body, to get himself ready for Thomas. 

Branson’s eyes are locked on his collar bone, and Thomas wonders what he thinks about before his own thoughts turn to Jimmy. What if it was Jimmy on his lap? Preparing himself to be taken by Thomas? To be made love by Thomas?

Wishful thinking. Jimmy wants nothing more than a friend from him. If even that. Maybe it’s just the guilt talking for Thomas being hurt to save him. He closes his eyes until a broad palm wraps around him, stroking him slowly. Branson has done it before.

He opens his eyes, Branson still staring on his chest, unblinking. Thomas doesn’t want to give in, but he can’t remember the last time he’s done this on a bed. He knows he’s never done it on his bed. Phillip’s bed? It’s been so long ago, and his body starts to react to Branson’s handling. 

Decision taken, he slicks his own flingers and tentatively straightens his body so he can find the place Branson’s fingers are inside his body. He rubs around them slowly, pushing one finger inside gently alongside Branson’s two fingers. The other man removes his fingers gasping, eyes finding Thomas’s now. 

The moment Thomas decides to go forth with this, he wants to make certain they will both enjoy it. He’s going to have Branson coming back. Again and again. Even if he hadn’t thought of him before as a potential lover. Even if it never happens again, he will make it pleasurable for the other man, so he’ll be thinking of Thomas every time he has sex. 

* * *

  
Barrow’s fingers are longer and thinker than his own and they stretch him so well. The ointment helps his way in. Tom now that he’s looked in Barrow’s eyes he can’t look elsewhere. The grey eyes are calm, the usual calculation is missing, they are as open as he has ever seen them. He moves his hips alongside Thomas’s movements. There’s no pain any longer.

Thomas pulls out his fingers and Tom lowers himself on him, slowly, leisurely. 

He can no longer pretend this is punishment. 

The shards’s sharp edges turn blunt as is the pain inside him.

He can no longer lie to himself. 

He lowers his body taking Thomas fully inside him. He’s long and thick, like the rest of him. His large palms are warm on his hips, holding him gently. This isn’t what he came here for. Tom was certain Barrow would not refuse to deliver his punishment. He had misjudged him again. He raises himself only to lower again. He grinds his pelvis against Thomas’s clothed stomach. His hand reaches and pushes the white undershirt up, fingers twisting the fabric. The other hand finds its way to the warm skin, touching the bruise there deliberately, eyes never leaving Thomas’s.

He shifts his hips, angles them, rocks again, moans at the feeling, and begins raising and lowering himself, burying Thomas deeper inside him with each fall. Thomas thrusts up gently giving him time to get used to him, time Tom doesn’t need. He stops Thomas’ hand from wrapping around him and shakes his head negatively. His fingers slip through Thomas’s longer ones. “Like this,” he whispers afraid he’s going to ruin the moment if he speaks louder. 

The pain inside dulls, changes into something else, something wholesome. Something he never thought he’d find in Barrow’s bed. In Thomas’s arms. 

Thomas, who has closed his eyes, long, dark eyelashes resting on his cheekbones, the shadows from the candlelight illuminating the other man’s attractiveness. Thomas straightens with a grant, and wraps his free arm around Tom’s back, trapping him between their bodies. Tom grinds against him, knees clutching his sides in a vice.

Tom raises his hand to trace the bruises on Thomas’s face with his fingertips and Thomas bucks upward in his tight heat. The back of his fingers caresses the bruise on Thomas’s jaw and he doesn’t resist the urge to kiss it gently, earning a grasp from the man his squeezing hadn’t been successful at. His tongue follows the path his finger had taken and Thomas reaches somewhere deep inside him, pleasure runs through all his nerves. “Again,” he feels like begging. Thomas doesn’t need begging to do it again and Tom finds his lips for the second time that night, this time keeping the contact soothing, just lips caressing lips as the pleasure inside him grows.

He rocks his thighs down, his tongue licks along Thomas’ lips asking entrance that is granted and he doesn’t want this to end. He craves to stay here with Thomas deep inside him touching that spot that brings stars to his eyes and electricity all over his body. He tangles the fingers of one hand on Thomas unslick, soft hair, the other clasping the undershirt on Thomas’ back. 

He kisses Thomas with lips and tongue, and give and takes, and rocks down just as Thomas bucks up, and he’s embraced and he embraces back, his semen spills between the two just as warmth fills him when he spasms around Thomas.

Thomas’s eyes are closed, and Tom pushes the sweaty locks aside and kisses his cheek. Thomas opens them and here’s the look Tom had envied earlier.

It’s all his now. All his. He brought it to Thomas Barrow’s eyes. Filled with tears. The shrapnel in his heart is still there but it is motionless as the butterflies floated around it. Both of Thomas’s arms are around him, holding him close. _“Stay?_ ”

Tom nods against the bruised skin.

* * *

A few words of encouragement will be greatly appreciated.


	2. Chapter 2

Thomas knows Branson’s game. He knows what he’s trying to do, what he attempts to make of Thomas.

  
He is not sure he can blame him. Thomas has been too angry for such a long time to care for the consequences of his actions and his words. He’s let his emotions drive his actions for a long time. 

  
It bitterly downs on him people don’t know and don’t care about his emotions. They only see his actions, his words of distaste towards good people, while he’s not one of the good people. He’s the villain of the story, any way he sees it.

That’s what Branson thinks. That’s why he came to him that night. Thomas stomps on the cigarette butt diminishing the orange glow. Then he lights another.

Thomas is a thief of his master’s wine, isn’t he? He almost lost his job over it. He tries to remember what had prompted him to steal the wine. He had made certain after listening to Carson for hours to take the most expensive of the bottles. And then water the plants with it. 

He inhales the smoke inside and lets it out slowly with a smile. 

  
He’s the villain of the story, any way he sees it.  
  
He is a thief of his master’s wine.   
  
He tries to remember what had prompted him to steal the most expensive of wine from Lord Grantham’s cellar and under Carson’s nose. And rightly proceed to watering the plants with it.  
  
He inhales the smoke deep inside and lets it out with a smirk. Thomas doesn’t drink wine, no matter its quality. Not even Phillips had convinced him to taste it even though he pretended quite convincingly. Even now, he vividly remembers the smell of his father’s breath so close to his face his stomach clenches painfully, nausea rising to his throat. A phantom pain on his palms remind him of the belt raising and crashing on his small palms. A punishment for accidentally breaking the glass of wine. A punishment that didn’t fit the crime.   
  
He had been seven years old. That child is still somewhere inside him, trembling in fear with the smell of wine. Or with the sound of a glass breaking.   
  
He hadn’t meant to break it. It didn’t matter though. It was as if he did.   
  
Was he the villain back there too then? Did he deserve to be punished?  
  
It doesn’t matter. He’s the villain now.   
  
  
His body aches and he leans on the wall for support.  
  
He’s also a coward. The bad guy who gets to cause his own injury to return home. Not even a real home at that. Certainly not a home where he was welcome. He refused to fight on behalf of his country.  
  
A deserter. In moments like this, he wonders how many in the house know the truth. He thanks a God he’s not certain he still believes in for Mrs. Hughes not knowing the extent of his cowardness, of not knowing the truth.  
  
Worst of all, he doesn’t regret it. He doesn’t regret coming home alive from a soul-crashing war that brought zero difference to his life. Everything makes his life worse. No light in the abyss.  
  
He takes in the smoke and muses on what hurt him more?  
  
The most.  
  
Was it the unexpected belting of his small palms?  
  
Or was it the very expected bullet through it? His blood splattering all over him?  
  
He can’t tell. He can no longer distinguish what hurts the most. It’s one hurt on top of the other, added on the pile of old wounds, still open.   
  
He cannot tell. Phillip made certain of it.   
  
  
Phillip, who took a stupidly naïve Thomas and convinced him he could be loved just as he was, only for Phillip to not have a place in his live for Thomas. In retrospect, It was the right decision for everyone involved. Phillip could surely do it differently in a way that wouldn’t have left Thomas feeling used and not worthy.  
  
In the large scheme of things that Thomas never particularly cared about, it wouldn’t have changed much though and he’s willing to accept it now.   
  
Maybe.  
  
Just another thing in the long list of things that left Thomas bitter and angry.   
  
Angry towards Phillip.  
Angry towards himself.  
Angry towards anyone he can’t share his anger and pain with. Which is everyone; it is a society filled with good people who refuse to accept him but never stops having demands of him.  
  
  
Thomas has been alone for such a long time and bitter for longer that Jimmy was an oasis in the dessert of his life. He thought he had acquired a companion. In his loneliness, he convinced himself –and how can he consider himself any different than Phillip in terms of who’s responsible for the close destruction of his whole life?- Jimmy shared his feelings.   
  
The fool he was!  
  
But he’s not, is he? In difference circumstances, Ms. O’Brien’s plotting would have fallen of deaf ears. If only he was less lonely… would he have been less of a fool?  
  
Thomas is honest with himself. If not to anyone else, he has to be honest with himself. He knows he’s let Ms. O’Brien manipulate him in the past, many times and while he managed to land on his feet, the problems for him were always bigger than hers.   
  
The fate of the local villain. He refuses to believe it but maybe it is his nature. Half the reasons he’s been brought close to destruction is his isolation from those around him. The mutual hatred. With him being the bad guy.   
  
He pulls away from the wall and walks slowly around the premises thinking of Bates helping him, Mrs. Hughes warm, motherly hug from a year ago. He has already managed to push them away. He’s not the only one responsible, but he has his own part in it.   
  
Laughter cuts through his thoughts and he walks towards the sound. It’s one of the babies, and they don’t judge him, they don’t hate him, he’s not unnatural to them. He hides himself by the corner of the wall.  
  
  
Master George is too young, his mother is lost in her grief and the baby is taken care of by the Nanny.   
  
  
Branson is playing with his daughter.   
  
Of course, he is.   
  
  
Thomas likes Sybbie. She reminds him of her mother. He thinks she likes him as young as she is. As much as she can love a man like Thomas.   
  
Her father is a mystery though. Thomas thought he had figured him out. He’s everything Thomas is in all the ways apparently, but he’s accepted because of his wife. Thomas’s bitterness grows larger when it comes to others succeeding where he failed. Especially when others haven’t much to deserve their success.  
  
Even as he hides and tries to put himself on Branson’s place –he can’t really- he knows he hasn’t given much thought of the night he spent with him. Thomas something thinks it was an odd dream influenced by his beaten head and the pain medicine.   
  
He remembers waking up alone the next morning, not much of a change, and he’s willing to pretend it didn’t happen.  
  
Even if he’s certain it did happen.  
  
After all what can he do? He should feel insulted, he is insulted, but at the same time, he’s used in being used.  
  
In the past he used to think he was jealous of Branson. In a strange turn of events, he feels pity for him. Having Lady Sybil and losing her would have wounded anyone. Hell, her death hurt Thomas and he wasn’t in love with her, hadn’t planned to share his life with her, he wasn’t her family. He most definitely didn’t have a child with her.  
  
So, he feels sorry for Branson.   
  
Even though it is Thomas who has no family at all.   
His family didn’t want him. No one really wants him, only he squeezes in to live like a parasite among them regardless.   
  
Except, Branson wanted him. He sought for him. How did he want him? Thomas feels the smoke in his lungs, coming back up burning in its way as he concludes. Branson found him to be his punishment. The villain again. It was either him or Edna and isn’t an amusing comparison?   
  
Thomas had been watching Edna circling around Lord Grantham’s son in law like a vulture and waited patiently for her quest to fail. He thought at the time Branson was intelligent enough to not fall for her games. To be honest, he didn’t care for the whole dramatic affair other than as amusement. Clearly, he had overestimated Branson –even Lady Sybil wasn’t much attracted to intelligence apparently and who was he to judge, but did Branson deserve her?- or he had underestimated his guilt.   
  
Guilt has brought many men, better than Thomas and Branson put together, to their end. Thomas tries to avoid it all cost.   
  
Edna hadn’t underestimated it and she schemed around it; he gives her that. Great job done.   
  
Branson is handsome enough, Thomas amends, even if Thomas himself had never seen him as a potential lover, Jimmy notwithstanding. Branson was a man, like any man around there, to ridicule and push away.   
  
That was before.  
  
Now, he doesn’t think of him at all. He’s not certain he can afford it. The insinuation that Thomas has replaced Edna in Branson’s big plan of atonement and punishment over some gibberish he thinks he has done is disturbing in ways Thomas’ tired mind cannot nor want to count.  
  
  
In conclusion, he avoids Tom Branson and everything that took place that night, second to the incident with Jimmy, as much as he can. He honestly cannot understand what possessed him to give in to Branson that night. Had he been more clear-minded and in less pain, he’d have kicked him out of the room. Or so he says to himself.   
  
  
Despite appearances, he is not going to be the villain in this gothic romance. He won’t have Lady Sybil’s ghost haunting him for hurting her beloved.   
  
Naturally, the next time Branson ends up in front of his door, more drunk than the first time, Thomas doesn’t let him in. He puts on his robe, wraps in around himself like an armour, takes Branson from the elbow and drags him to his room, hoping no one gets to see them.   
For once in his life, he’s lucky.   
  
He returns to his own room, body aching all over, as if he got beaten sometime in the last couple of hours. He lies on the bed dressed in his robe and covers himself with his blankets, teeth clashing inside his mouth, body trembling from sheer exhaustion.  
  
  
“I thought you’d rejoice in humiliating me.”

Bloody hell, it should sting, but here he is. 

Tom cannot have this conversation with Barrow sober. Shame colours his cheeks and turns to leave him behind when the other man’s voice cuts him. 

“Who says I am not?” he smirks, hoping his expression shows smugness and scorn rather than disappointment and resentment.   
Villain, remember?  
  
He’s in one of those old folk tales pretending to be a man when in fact he’s a beast whose instinct and evil intention is recognized by the hero who begs for punishment. He’s executed the role well and still plays it to perfection.  
  
“Then why?” Branson insists to dig and scratch to draw blood from Thomas’s wounds and he doesn’t even know how successful he is.  
  
“Why what?”   
  
“Not take the chance?”  
  
  
Thomas watches as Jimmy with Alfred and the girls leave the Abbey for their half day out and suddenly he feels too old, too tired, and too numb and realizes he is not listening to Branson talking to him.   
  
“What chance?” To Thomas’s eyes Branson comes as worse than Thomas in his bad moments of self-pity. Regardless what Carson thinks of him, what society think of men like Thomas, what Branson himself should have knows being like him in a way, Thomas doesn’t use sex as punishment, either his own or his partner’s. He’s got few nice things in life to taint this too.   
  
He rests the cigarette between his lips and takes his lighter in his hand turning it around with his fingers, watching its strange orange glow from the sun setting. He takes the cigarette from between his lips and exhales the smoke.  
  
Thomas, despite himself, is amused by Branson’s fidgeting. Branson shoves his hands inside his pockets and leans against the wall to stop moving while Thomas pretends he’s not watching his every move. “You know what,” he says eventually.  
  
  
“Well, Mr. Branson,” Thomas drawls and if his memory decides to remind him right there how it was to be with the other man, the warmth inside him, the weight on top of him, the pleasure in contrast to the hurt of his injuries, he shoves it aside. “I’ve been lucky so far,” he stands straight, his greater height in full display for the shorter man. “But, imagine if I get caught buggering Lord Grantham’s son in law? A heartbroken widower? Who’s going to be blamed for seducing a nice catholic boy? And what is it going to happen to me then? No humiliation of yours will make my imprisonment enjoyable.” He steps away and with a faux respectful bow he leaves Branson alone in the courtyard.  
  


* * *

  
  
  
“You are distracted,” Jimmy says to him a couple of days later when comes out with him in Thomas walk. Jimmy is friendlier now. He doesn’t have a look of disgust on his face. Thomas is certain he no longer sees Thomas like a vermin ready to infect him, but he cannot be certain can he now? And it’s a walk in the park for Thomas to have Jimmy so close to him, listening to his romantic pursues.  
  
He’s still not permitted to return to his duties, the bruises decorating his face and knuckles not as vividly coloured but a ghastly yellowish purple. He takes a short time in the mirror to shave himself. If could avoid looking at his face it would have been better. At least the swelling on the side of his head is down, even if the ache persists.   
  
“Just tired,” he admitted.  
  
“You should enjoy your idleness and rest.” Jimmy’s called by Alfred for the dinner preparations and Thomas is left alone smoking away his worries. It is evening like this one that Thomas ponders on the “what ifs” of life.   
  
What would have happened if Thomas had endured life in the front of war? Would he have survived where others died?  
  
What would have happened if Edward Courtenay hadn’t die? Can he bring himself to imagine the man held some interest in Thomas? The snort is derisive. The Lieutenant most probably would want to get know Lady Sybil better. Like any man of his place.  
  
Like any man who isn’t like Thomas.  
  
The house is dark and desolate since Matthew Crawley’s death. Thomas still can’t believe it. He’s sorry for him. For the family he’s not going to live with, for his boy he’s not going to see growing up. Mr. Crawley would be a good father, Thomas supposes. A better one than his own Pa. But that doesn’t mean much. Anyone can be a better father than his.  
  
A spasm in his hand reminds him of the weather. It was raining earlier than day and the humidity increased the ache. It never goes fully away; it’s always there, dull but persistent to remind him the way he saved himself. Thomas often thinks he can’t do his job well, but he clenches his mouth and keeps on going despite the pain.   
  
He’s certain though a time will come, maybe soon enough, the pain will be a hindrance and someone, anyone really, possibly Carson himself, will see it and give him the boot.  
  
Morose and tired, he retires to his room after dinner. He tries to stay far away from most of the other servants until his bruises are gone.   
  
Edna is gone, so that’s a plus, he thinks.   
  
The rain returns to match his mood.  
  
Even feeling gloomy, he thinks he’s going to sleep tonight, but then he hears a knock on his door.   
  
And this cannot keep going, surely!  
  
He opens the door and pulls Branson inside, agitated and worried someone might see him. “What are you doing here?”  
  
Branson is wet from the rain and without a coat. Thomas takes a towel from the side table and dries his own hand that had touched Branson and presses it on the other man’s hands. “Dry yourself.”  
  
“Thank you,” Branson accepts the towel and dries his hair with it.  
  
Thomas waits.   
  
And watches.   
  
Branson has put on some weight. He’s slept with the man and he only now notices the differences between the man in front of him and the man he met so many years ago. When they were young and reckless.   
  
Thomas is still reckless, as recent events demonstrated and with the same disastrous results as back then.  
  
Only now, he feels he has more to lose.   
  
He’s older.   
Tired.   
Lonely.  
  
Branson looks up and looks at him with wet eyes. Thomas closes his own. So, he’s not the only one who cries.   
  
A hand on his shoulder. He opens his eyes. The towel is not the bedside table again and Branson is holding his shoulder, his eyes seeking something from him.  
  
“What do you want?”  
  
“You know what I want.”   
  
“You should buy a whip.”  
  
“I have you.”  
  
“No, you don’t. I’m not a method of torture, Mr. Branson.” He removes the hand that clutched to him like an anchor mooring him to the other man.  
“I just want to feel alive again, Thomas.”  
  
It’s the way he says his name. Thomas shares the want. 

They find themselves on Thomas’s bed, every action between Branson’s words and lying on the white sheets hazy with Thomas as undecided as last time, as lost as last the other night he found himself between Branson’s thighs.

Thick hands cup his head. “Don’t think.” Branson cajoles, reaching up to kiss him. Thomas leans down, lips on the sensitive skin of Branson’s throat, pressing against his neck, pushing away every hostile thought that tries to stop him from having something for himself.

It won’t end well, the voice says.

Thomas knows. He gives into temptation regardless.

  
The rain pounds the shutters, the wind blows outside.  
The room is warm. 

When Tom left Thomas’s room that night, he promised to himself to never come back. He breaks the promise with vigour. Last time he had drunk, this time he followed Thomas’s advice and he’s sober. He aimed to stay away, to find another way to fight his demons and loss but his thoughts kept returning to the man he used to detest. Still does?

He was not sure.

Until Thomas rejected him.  
Instead of leaving, because he didn’t want to leave, he couldn’t physically leave, and the truth crashes inside him, shaking him whole. 

He doesn’t want Thomas as punishment. He just wants Thomas, any way he can have him. 

And he pulls, and holds, undresses and looks, kisses and touches, listens to the rain outside and smells Thomas’s unique scent of soap and smoke and leather. He feels close to a distant man, and Tom has to change that. 

Thomas’s breathes deeply on his shoulder, pushes gently against him and Tom wraps his hand around both of them, pumping them both, wanting more but not daring to ask for it. When the release comes, reminding him he’s alive, he closes his eyes and he wraps his arms around Thomas to hold him there, a warm weight on his body, securing him against the night and the rain. 

  
“What if Carson finds us?” Thomas asks afterwards, his breath tickling Tom’s shoulder.

“No worries, I’ll say I seduced you.”

An undignified sound close to a snort and the long torso of the man in arms shakes in amusement. “You will certainly be believed.”

Thomas leans slightly to the left, trying to remove some of his weight from Branson, but the other man holds him there. “Don’t move.”

Thomas inhales. He can’t bring himself to regret this, no matter how wrong it is. He kisses the skin beneath his lips and Branson turns his head to catch his mouth in a gentle kiss Thomas is surprised to be asked by him.

He’s even more surprised to find himself responding. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just realized this is faux character-study (well, not so fake inside my head) through self-reflection ending up in sex.  
> And no plot whatsoever.


	3. Chapter 3

Tom cannot, will not and does not want to understand what is going on between himself and Thomas. He keeps going back to him and Thomas keeps on giving him what he needs rather than what he wants. Observing Thomas smoking after an intense climax has become another highlight in his otherwise tortured life. Lying on coarse sheets reminds him of another time, long buried under new memories of silk and soft curves Thomas lacks.

Tom was confused for a long time, while coming back again and again for more.

Still is. Probably always will be. He is the first to admit he can’t change his mind easily.

He wasn't used, hurt or abused in any way. Thomas let him choose the pace and that often left Tom disoriented and lost. Guilt came after excitement to cement the wrongness of the act. It was a distraction from the constant ache, and his body was accommodated and kept craving for more. Soon, the mind took the hint as well. Seeing Thomas when he served breakfast or lunch, randomly working around the house led to increased heartbeat and tightening of the scrotum.

“You know, despite certain misconceptions on my part, I’d expect some kind of guilt, religious or otherwise.”

Thomas rarely utters a word during their trysts. When he does, it’s an honest question, something that baffles him about Tom and his attitude towards life, no covered belittling or insult in sight. Tom, with his own preconceived notions about the man he gladly shared his body moments ago, often finds himself bristling, willfully taking the words the wrong way

“It’s late by more than a decade for that sort of guilt.”

Thomas says nothing, a low hum deep in his throat, smoke moving around him enveloping his face, giving him a mysterious allure and quality found in the old Celtic myths Tom used to read as a lad and in fairy tales about enticing seductive beings deliberately leading naïve peasants to their deaths.

Tom believes he knows what his bed partner thinks this moment. Tom’s insistence on a catholic baptism for his and Sybil’s daughter has made the rounds in the servants’ hall just as much among the Crawleys.

Perhaps he thinks about the power such an action holds over the Crawleys, the same power Tom gifts to Thomas. Being with Thomas here, like this should have been awkward. His own semen drying on his chest, he remembers Thomas deep inside his body and Tom has no haste to get up to clean himself.

It’s not dirty.

He’s not dirty.

_This is not what he desired to get but he slowly becomes addicted to it._

Thomas constantly proves himself to be different than Tom's idea of an eager abuser. It doesn’t stop him pursuing his original intent. He gives Thomas all the power he thought the other man craves for, all the power he wants to snatch from the Crawleys.

"I don’t understand what you want to succeed by coming here,” Thomas said one night, that Tom had sneaked into his room, knelt down in front of him as a sacrifice to an unforgiving God. Tom had turned red from embarrassment and Thomas had manhandled him to his feet and made him sit on his small bed. Tom remembers him walking up and down the room like a cornered animal, tall and dark and fierce, trying to find a way out for both of them. Tom himself was looking for ways to bring him to bed.

Thomas had not been a person in his mind but a means to an end.

Spending his nights with Thomas was a means to an end. The idea of submitting himself so degrading and humiliating.

Submitting to a man like Thomas? A man despised by everyone just as much Tom has managed to be respected and loved, even cherished by some.

The secret desire buried deep inside of being discovered by Robert and thrown out disgraced? Even as he comes here, ashamed, and weak, he thinks of the moment Thomas will use it against Tom. He wants him to.

It was never like this before, hidden in alleys or in attics, give and take of power between friends who would keep their mouths and minds shut at the action, the thrill opposing the need to keep quiet and safe.

Tom doesn’t crave safety when he is with Thomas and doesn’t care for the man’s future if they got discovered. He almost wants for to go down in flames together.

Thomas proves him wrong in every step of the way by taking the power he is given r and returning it back with kindness. It’s a savage dance that turns elegant in Thomas’s hands.

Who? Thomas Barrow! Who doesn’t open his mouth unless it is with a scathing remark born to hurt.

And still, Tom tries again and again to dig out the man he thinks Thomas is and prove himself right in every possible way. This is punishment he brings upon himself for absolution. Nothing more, nothing less, he says to himself who recoils at the lie.

He pushes the covers away and straddles Thomas’s thighs.

For a moment he wonders what image they present. He, sitting on Thomas who is watching him wide-eyed. Any spectator would not see much of them. His naked back would be clear to anyone’s gaze, and by lowering his upper body closer to Thomas’ pelvis his back arched, his buttocks high, he could be found in a compromising position, no way to be explained.

He closes his eyes, controlling his breathing and the warmth on his cheeks. He breathes deeply, the scent of sex strong. A door closes somewhere close, and Thomas jerks beneath him. Tom’s lips curve upwards and he bends his face closer to Thomas’s sex. For a moment, the thinks Thomas will push him away and get up to check who is outside. He cannot have it.

He opens his mouth and licks the tip with his tongue. Everything else disappears, as his senses focus on Thomas and the feel of him quivering under Tom’s touch.

It’s strange, he supposes. This act isn’t meant to make him feel like this. It never did.

He licks around Thomas who hardens under his ministrations. He thinks the other man fists the sheets, but he doesn’t care enough to open his eyes and look.

Not yet.

Back in Ireland, among his friends, revolutionaries and not, was Francis. He was a couple of years older than Tom, a painter, who worked in a factory producing rosaries. Francis lived in a small room, sharing the bathroom with everyone in the corridor. The walls of his tiny room were filled with books, top to bottom, categorised in a way only Francis knew the secrets of it.

Tom used to spend his free time there. No need to hide Between stolen innocent looks, Tom could borrow a book and read, even if Francis wasn’t there.

One day Tom found Francis’s notes and drawings. Vulgar images of intimate poses usually performed behind closed doors. Tom had seen before images of nude women or even couples, but this was different. These were men. A man on his knees, sucking another, or on his hands and knees taking someone from behind. Descriptions were written in Francis’s precise cursive handwriting, it took some time for Thomas to read it.

Tongue in cheek, Francis retold every derisive comment _normal_ men held about the positions drawn with gusto, but Tom made the connection between images and words and wants and longings he shouldn’t have, oblivious of the sarcasm behind the words.

Heart now beats like it did then. Cheeks just as red. Want just as intense.

Butterflies swarm inside his belly and he licks Thomas’s erection feeling the shivers of pleasure running through his body. He licks, spit escaping his mouth, mixing with drops of the milky-white salty substance intensifying the taste. He closes Thomas’ in his mouth and increases the pressure and movements of his tongue. Thomas is big inside his mouth and he gets bigger.

It’s almost impossible to breathe. Tears form in Tom’s eyes.

This is what he wanted. This is his craving. His heart swells and he takes it deeper, restricting his tongue and throat. He’s held prisoner just as Thomas is held inside his mouth, just as his hands wrap around the thick member.

And then Thomas moans. Weakness becomes control.

The surge of power he feels negates his idea of self-punishment.

He’s the one doing this. Thomas’s pleasure is at his hands. He’s at his mercy and not the other way around.

The thickness in his mouth becomes bearable, he can breathe easily now through his nose and taste again.

Tom sucks deeper and glances at Thomas, who in turn is staring at him, grey locked on blue, blue locked on blue. He can’t look away as he licks, sucks and holds with his hands until Thomas comes, thick and pulsating in his mouth.

Tom swallows what he can, little leaks down his mouth and Thomas raises his hand, and gentle fingers clean it away.

Tom thinks he’s going to be kissed but the hand travels down to his neck, warm and calloused skin on his sweaty skin, circles and caresses until if finds Tom’s nipple to play with it and pinch it with his fingers.

The sense of power dissolves, but what’s left behind is not humiliation, it is not pain, it is not sacrifice or torture. It’s something sweeter, something wholesome that wraps around his stomach and moves up to his chest, filling it.

Another door closes and this time Tom wonders what time it is and a tendril of fear sprouts next to the contentment. He doesn’t want to be discovered. Thomas raises his torso from the pillows and pulls him closer to him. Now, his butt rests on Thomas’s soft member, and their bellies almost touch, a hair’s breath away, just as Thomas’s palms splay on his ribs touching, awaking his own shaft until a broad hand wraps around it to jerk him slowly.

Thomas’s lips find his. “Rise up a bit,” he whispers across them, tongue licking the seam of his mouth. Tom does and a slicked finger enters his already sensitive entrance.

Thomas’s kiss is fire, intense, capable of burning everything in its path. He’s all around Tom, deep inside him. His hand tightens around him, Tom gyrates his hips to take the finger, then two fingers deeper until they touch something inside him that brings pleasure to every nerve of his body. He gasps and Thomas’s tongue is inside his mouth mimicking the thrusts of his fingers. Tom almost bounces on Thomas’s hand wanting more, needing more, eyes closed against the onslaught of pleasure.

The hand around him slackens to just holding him, then leaves altogether to trail up to his chest, but lips and teeth and tongue steal his breath away, nails scratching his nipple and fingers become more, thicker, longer pumping inside him and it’s too much and he spills himself between his chest and Thomas’s for the second time.

Thomas is still kissing him, a tender slide of lips against lips, against a cheek, against his jaw line, on his neck. He sucks and kisses and licks and sucks again and Tom thinks next morning his shirt, collar and tie will cover a purple bruise just underneath his pulse point.

He doesn’t mind.

Pleasure runs through his blood faster than the remorse. Guilt and pain are absent for now.

He reaches behind him.

He doesn’t like the emptiness.

He doesn’t know what he wants.

Thomas lies down on the pillows looking expectantly at him, confused just as much as Tom feels. He finds Thomas’s shaft and wraps his hand around him, it’s soft and sensitive if Thomas’s gasp at his touch is any indication. He pushes down on it, feeling full and filled and he would smirk at Thomas’s wide eyes, if this wasn’t what he needs now.

To be connected. To not be alone.

He bends his head on Thomas’s chest. One thick arm wraps itself around his shoulder and long fingers thread through his hair.

“Just for a while,” he says against the hairy chest.

Thomas holds him tight against him. Just like every time.

He thinks he hears Thomas speaking. “It can’t last long.”

Tom knows. He knows he’s going to come back for more under false pretenses. And Thomas will prove him wrong again.

He knows he must stop asking for this. “I know.”

He just does not know when.

He clenches his inner muscles feeling Thomas inside him and breathes in the smell of his soap missed with sweat and envelops his torso. He wishes he could do more. Become one.

But he’s alone in this, and even if Thomas isn’t the villain in this story, he cannot or will not want him back in this way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All I want from this chapter is Tom's inner conflict to be clear, amidst the sex. I hope it worked. 
> 
> The story is not finished, but the pace changes soon and there may even be ...gasp... plot. However, I write every chapter in a way for it to be read as complete.
> 
> I wonder if I can describe this as "enemies to lovers to friends" (eventually).
> 
> comments are always welcome


	4. Chapter 4

“Mr. Barrow, Mr. Branson has asked for you to accompany him to assist him in… something,” Carson stops for a few measured breaths and continues. “He’s said it’s an outdoor business and you’ll both be back by tomorrow evening. I told him it’s your half-day, but he insisted so I informed him I would ask you. Should you choose to agree, you’ll be having your half day on Saturday for recompense.”

Thomas knows by looking at Carson he can refuse. The man will pretend Thomas will not do anything right, and will grumble for a while, but that’s the answer he wants from Thomas.

He wonders if he should ask what “business” Mr. Branson is talking about, but even as the thought comes, it leaves. In truth, nothing Branson wants is usually discussed among polite company.

Thomas should refuse. The sooner the better. He ashes his cigarette. “Alright. What time do we leave?”

Carson hands him an envelope. He pushes his chair behind and stands. “I need to finish my duties before I get ready.”

This is so very stupid, even by his own standards, he thinks.

“And Mr. Branson asked specifically for Thomas,” Thomas overhears Bates asking presumably Carson, but he doesn't stay to listen to the answer.

Of course! Of course, the idiot asked for Thomas specifically!

And Thomas has accepted. Of course, he has! Because Branson is not the only idiot. Thomas may very well be a bigger one.

With his mind preoccupied with his thoughts of eminent doom that at the very least won’t take place in his room, he finishes his duties and dons on his suit. It’s not the same suit he worn in the fair in Thirst. Someone had that cleaned and repaired for him, but the shirt had been ripped in many places. It’s the end of November now, and he has to wear a warmer suit, woolen.

Buttoning up his shirt and waistcoat, he thinks this is the first time he gets out after that day. He leans close to the bathroom mirror where he went to change and checks his face. Bruises are gone, his skin is clear. The side of his head still hurts if he pushes hard enough, but it’s a mild discomfort he can live with. Just like his hand. Always reminding him it is no longer the way it used to be, aching at the most unconvinient time of the day.

He’ll get through it though. He always does.

"Where are we going?" Thomas is surprised to find Branson leaning against the car when Thomas gets in the yard, waiting for him.

"You'll see," he offers no other explanation and Thomas doesn't ask for more. It is a rainy, gloomy afternoon and he can't take his eyes off the scenery as Branson drives them to their destination. He's lost in memories of similar afternoons of his childhood and youth when he would sit by the hearth and dream of the future. Hope for the future. Emptiness has replaced that hope.

He swallows the wrong way, and a coughing fit brings him to the present. Branson gestures to the back. "Get some water."

His throat is dry water is stopped by some invisible power. Branson stops the car and Thomas spits the water until he's dry heaving, a hand on his back holding him still. "Are you alright?"

He bloody well isn't. "Fine." He breathes deeply, trying to calm down his pounding heart.

"I don't believe you."

He doesn't care.

The rain gets heavier and it will soon get darker. Thomas is fine. As he always is.

Branson restarts the car silently, stealing glances towards him. _Stop it,_ he wants to say. _Don't pretend to care_. Instead he looks out from the window keeping his thoughts closer to the present.

Every time he enters a new house, he gets to inspect it, to know where everything is, which door holds what behind and what are his duties. This time is not like that. Branson pushes him to sit on a chair and tells him to wait until he lights a fire. Headaches had been constant since their joyful trip to the Thirsk Fair, and this one wins an award. A volcano has exploded inside his head and fire consumes everything is its path.

Branson moves around the room brining logs from somewhere. A screech, along with the loud bang which accompanies it, has out of his chair and reaching out to help Branson who has found himself on the slippery floor.

Everything afterwards is a blur as he finds himself plastered against Branson's back, both their trousers down their hips. Branson pushes back against him taking him deeper in his body, groaning his name. "Thomas." It slowly becomes a chant in the man's brogue. Warmth envelopes Thomas from head to toe, outside and inside. Branson is everywhere around him squeezing him like a vice, his voice whispering his name penetrating his blurry thoughts like a knife.

Thomas has his hands on Branson's hips steadying instead of directing his moves and it's Branson's doing all the hard work, fucking himself with Thomas body and it's Branson's intense climax that brings him to his own. They collapse on the floor, limbs intertwined, breathing hard, Branson's face half hidden from Thomas's gaze. The will to lean over and pull the man over, kiss him, hold him, caress him, clean him, talk to him is strong.

The headache weakens him. They are not like that. He can't do what he wants.

"Let's get ourselves cleaned and see what we can do."

Thomas doesn't know what they plan to do, what Branson wants them to do. Does he plan to spend the day fucking? Is that the plan?

He glances down with distaste. Dust and semen both Branson's and his own leaking down the thick thighs need to be cleaned. It's a distraction from the pain and the possessiveness crawling and screaming in his consciousness.

He raises himself and offers his hand to Branson, who grasps it and lets himself be pulled. Getting to his feet, he stumbles into Thomas's hard chest. Instinctively Thomas wraps his arms around him, leaving over to inhale his scent.

Wishing it was Jimmy.

And takes a step back, both mentally and physically because he hasn't thought of Jimmy for a while now. Branson is Branson.

* * *

Thomas keeps his eyes closed; arms tightly wrapped around the man lying on his chest. He doesn't know the time. It was already late when his door had slowly opened to admit Tom inside, for the third night this week. It's only Wednesday. Thomas is acutely aware of the risk Branson's continued presence in his room presents for him. He shudders remembering the fiasco with Jimmy. He promised to himself he'd stay away from unnecessary danger. Finding love and companionship was, is and will always be an unattainable dream for Thomas. Men like Branson have it easier.

And now he jeopardises everything, in a far worse way, he doubts Lord Grantham will be ready to talk on his behalf if his son in law gets found in his room butt naked and fucked into next day. The time he could kick Branson out if his room has passed.

Thomas recalls the first time Branson came to Downton Abbey. Thomas had spared him a look at that was it. Never, not even in his wildest dreams, would he imagine they'd end up like this, in each other's arms, seeking comfort. Thomas hadn't been certain what Branson was seeking from him in the beginning.

All he knew it was nothing good.

Branson wanted nothing good from him.

Nothing good will come out from this liaison. Not for Branson and not for Thomas. His hand rubs circles on Tom's pale back, relishing the warmth. A lump forms in his throat. He can't swallow. He had been too weak to push the other man away the first time he visited. But the rest? It is not the first time his body goes against his will. How easy would have been to push Phillip away and salvage his letters from the fire? He was in shock then. He's not in shock now. He's just gotten used to the touch of another human body. The comfort. The warmth. He's been missing it for so long.

Even in the warped version Branson offers.

Thomas's brain could never really distinguish between love and physical pleasure. He tried it once with Pamuk. And another time, back in the war. Both experiences were traumatic, and he'll never understand how others do it. It's not even only the danger, even if it is always in the back of his mid, the fear they are going to be discovered and punished. No, more than that, it's cold, clinical satisfaction of the body, easily turned to nothing. Nothing to offer to Thomas. He's not twenty anymore.

Once again, he falls in the rabbit hole, trying to get back to his own reality unscathed.

He never understood why Lady Sybil -Nurse Crawley- decided to blow everything away for Tom Branson. Thomas hadn’t seen anything special in the other man, there is nothing special in the other man, but maybe that's it.

Maybe that’s what attracted Lady Sybil. His straightforwardness, God knows the men of her ilk are double faced and double crossers. Thomas would know. He observes that man lying on his chest. He's put some weight from when they first met. Thomas has lost weight. He looks older. So does Thomas. He has a family.

What does Thomas have?

He lights a cigarette, unable to take his gaze off an unremarkable painting on the wall, illuminated by the light from the candle. Tom didn’t say how he convinced everyone he needed Thomas with him for a supposed work. He doesn’t know what he’s going to say to them when they return. He can’t find it in him to ask Branson about it.

Branson will never say either. Branson doesn't talk much unless he's sated and calm, but when does, Thomas listens to his aspirations carefully, trying to understand him, for the first time ever, tries to see through his decision to seek Thomas. Smiling self-depreciatory, he thinks maybe that's his fault. Thomas starts seeing Branson not only as a person, a possible friend, but as a lover. Has been seeing him like this in a while. It's a mistake he knows he's going to pay dearly for, one way or another. He just waits for the other shoe to fall.

Thomas doesn't know where they are. He knows to come here again if he wishes, but he doesn't know to whom this place belongs to. It's a nice enough abode, with all the luxuries and the comforts he'd like in his own home, if he ever had one, and without the luxury of Downton Abbey. It's isolated as well. Thomas finds he likes it even though he had no time to see it, seeing Branson had other ideas of what he wanted to do and a tour around the house was not among them. Tom reminds him of Phillip in his passion. Both men took from Thomas what they wanted, but while Phillip was in haste to prove his superiority afterwards, Tom wants to keep him inside him. The Duke imposed and reclaimed what he thought he had lost during intimate moments, Branson clings to Thomas as if his life depends on it.

Thomas cannot understand either of them, their motivations, their instincts, what drives them to act the way they do, but he tries.

Does he do it at the expense of his own feelings? He doesn't think less of either of them. Why would he? It was clear Phillip held a dislike over what pleasured him, and Thomas had tried to take care of that too, any way he could, instead of basking in sated afterglow. In the end, it didn't mean much for the aristocrat.

Branson is not an aristocrat, is not of gentle birth, he is like Thomas. He too is not alright with himself but differently than Phillip. In what ways differently, Thomas can't tell.

Unquestionable, Branson's marriage to someone far above his own social status, bringing him to a society that did not know what to do with him. Branson now holds a kind of power over the Crawleys and while Thomas is certain Branson knows it and spitefully someone might say uses it, he is not at all sure if Branson knows what his real power is. Thomas believes Branson's power isn't his daughter as much as the other man thinks it is. It’s her mother's undying love for her husband that has given Branson something to hold over the Lord of Grantham. Thomas can say -and has said in his time- a thing or two about the Crawleys but one thing is certain. Their love for their children is vast, understanding, and unquestionable. And now Branson is their surrogate son, a child in place of the child they lost.

No matter how satisfied Thomas is out of their little arrangement, his mind is critical of Branson's decisions. He's a simple man, with his own demons to fight and come to terms with, Branson's is out of his own. He'll never talk about them, not to Branson, not to anyone. Thoughts about the man regularly interrupt his frantic mind, especially when Branson offers himself like the way he did earlier today leaving them both breathless.

Still, Thomas has the state of mind to keep himself at bay, to keep his heart at bay, a heart that has been yearning for Jimmy just weeks ago. Some part of him think it always will. These days, alongside his body, Branson's presence comes along with a stirring somewhere in his chest as well. It's uncomfortable. Thomas is used to uncomfortable. And he lets Branson take what he wants, keeping himself aloof, keeping himself still while being used, wary to take for himself. Always letting Branson take what he wants.

Thomas is used to denying himself. Whenever he's stopped doing it, he regretted it.

Branson moves against him, nuzzles his neck, stiffens, and relaxes against him again, his hand trailing along Thomas's abs. “Thomas,” his name sounds lovingly told. “Take me. Now.”

It's an echo from the past. " _Fuck me, Thomas! Now!_ " 

Thomas’s resolve, already blown by thoughts and emotions has shattered to ashes. He gives into temptation, brushing aside the warnings inside his head. He straddles Branson’s thighs and, running a hand almost reverently down Holmes stomach, he follows the movement with his mouth, sliding down Branson body to kiss his way to Branson’s member. 

Branson groans when Thomas takes in his mouth. Thomas hides a self-satisfying smirk at the man’s need. He’s the one awakening this need from Branson. He lets him go to retrieve the bottle he saw Branson stashing earlier on the bedside table.

His original thought over how the other man planned to spend their impromptu holiday was proven to be accurate.

Thomas imagines Branson’s eyes on him, watching as he coats his fingers with the oil. He sucks and licks Branson’s manhood even as he moved his oil coated hand to the most intimate part of his body, circling the entrance slowly inserting a finger.

His body accepts the intrusion easily, already wet from before. Thomas’s pleasure flows through him at Branson’s moaning. He presses back against Thomas’s fingers, his breath hitching. It takes little effort to work him open, stretching him with his fingers, hand jerking Branson’s erection.

By the time he has worked three fingers deep in Branson’s body, scissoring them and pressing gently against the gland inside his passage, Branson pants begging for more. Thomas wants to give him more, wants to give him everything. He pushes himself up, bracing his weight on his arms as he positions himself against Branson’s entrance.

Thomas pushes inside as Branson calls him by name, voice hoarse and broken, his breathing ragged matching Thomas’s who feels Branson relaxing around him quickly enough and presses more, until he’s fully buried. He remains still waiting once again a sign from the other man, and when Branson squeezes his muscles around him, he thrusts his hips slowly.

“Thomas.”

He moves his hips upwards towards Thomas’s.

“Thomas!”

His hands trail underneath Branson’s knees pushing them towards his chest, thrusting deeper, feeling the power of rendering the other man incapable of saying anything else than his name. He changes his angle and earns himself another groan from his lover. He thrusts slowly, driving the other man crazy, never taking his gaze from the flushed face, Branson’s erection brushing captive between their abdomens.

“Thomas!”

Branson can’t move in this position, he’s left prisoner of Thomas’s strength that rubs against his prostate more often than not. The broad hand is wrapped around his erection stroking it slowly in rhythm with his thrusts.

“Thomas,” he whispers brokenly, convulsing around him.

Thomas doesn’t falter, his thrusts turn erratic inside the tight heat, just as Branson arches his back, gasps and clenches around Thomas, moaning sweetly, body stiffening, spending himself in Thomas’s hand, warm and slick. Thomas buries himself as deeply as he can and stills against the agony of his pleasure, filling Branson’s passage with his own release.

He falls on top of the other man breathing deeply, nuzzling his face against the sweaty neck, still deep inside the other man, helping him to lower his legs on the bed.

“Tom,” he says reverently, kissing the blushing skin his lips find underneath them, willing the headache away.

Tom tenses beneath him for a few moments and then he wraps his arms around him, holding him there.

For now.


End file.
